If You Want To Change Things, You Cannit Change Them From The Floor, by Narbi Price
40 years on from the end of the Miners’ Strike, award-winning artist Narbi Price and acclaimed writer Mark Hudson have joined forces to create a major new exhibition exploring the changing landscapes and communities of County Durham’s post-industrial towns.
Opening on Friday 13th June at The Warehouse in Newgate Centre, Bishop Auckland, Going Back Brockens: Monuments and Rhetoric After the Miners’ Strike, is a three-part exhibition across County Durham that sees North East artist Narbi Price and writer Mark Hudson explore the post-strike landscape of County Durham, through a series of paintings and an accompanying sound installation.
Narbi Price’s 40 new paintings – created during the 40th anniversary year of the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike – depict former colliery sites as they stand today: silent spaces once central to working-class life, now reclaimed, repurposed, or left behind. Price’s paintings are paired with an immersive sound installation by Mark Hudson that revisits interviews from Hudson’s celebrated book Coming Back Brockens (1994), which capture the raw and emotive voices of those who lived through the strike.
The combination of paintings and sound explores not only what was lost, but what remains, what has changed, and how people continue to define their places and memories decades after the last coal was mined.
It Gives You A Family, by Narbi Price
Painter, curator and lecturer, Narbi Price, said:
I find it really interesting that we have generations of people living in places that are entirely shaped by mining, but might have no living memory of it themselves. These former pit villages, and the people that live in them, have tales to tell – not just stories of their industrial past, but new stories of the now, and of hope, progress and evolution.
The landscapes themselves also tell stories, and when I was choosing which sites to feature in my paintings I revisited Mark’s fantastic book. His incredible archive of interviews recorded after the Miners’ Strike has never been heard before. They have a very powerful dialogue with the paintings which really brings people’s stories to life.
Writer, journalist and critic Mark Hudson, added:
The 86 hours of interviews I did here in Horden 30 years ago were largely concerned with the Miners’ Strike, which was then very recent. In between the strike and me arriving in the village, the pit had closed. The pit was the purpose of Horden, and everything revolved around it – including my father’s family.
A lot of Narbi’s paintings are about places that became monuments of a disappearing culture. Combined with the spoken word, you develop this powerful rhetoric.
We Were At The Sharp End, Us, by Narbi Price.
The three-part exhibition opens on Friday 13 June (5pm-9pm) in Bishop Auckland, where all 40 paintings and accompanying sound installation will be on display at The Warehouse, a new grassroots arts space space being developed by MINE Collective, using vacant units at the Newgate Shopping Centre.
On Saturday 12 July, the exhibition will form part of the 139th Durham Miners’ Gala. Price’s paintings will be displayed on the field at the historic gathering in Durham City, along with Hudson’s immersive sound installation.
Completing the exhibition’s three-part run will be a special showcase at Horden’s 125th anniversary celebrations on Friday 22 August. The 40 paintings from Going Back Brockens will be exhibited in the village, whilst Mark’s immersive soundscape of Horden residents’ voices from 1991-92 will be installed in the historic St Mary’s Church, also known as ‘The Miners’ Cathedral’ – a deeply symbolic setting. Complementing the show will be a special exhibition by the Horden Hooked on Craft group, responding to the project themes to create their own work about place.
Narbi Price and Mark Hudson in front of St Mary’s church in Horden, one of the venues hosting part of the exhibition
Accompanying the Going Back Brockens exhibition is a series of six short films by filmmaker Carl Joyce. Where We Belong is a new documentary film series that explores the relationship between people and place in County Durham. Inspired by Mark Hudson’s 1994 book ‘Coming Back Brockens’, each short film will tell the unique stories of the people who call the County Durham villages their home, and the way they continue to shape them.
The project has also invited members of the public to share their stories about place through pictures, videos and words contributing to an ongoing community archive, which can be seen alongside Going Back Brockens at The Warehouse in Newgate Centre, Bishop Auckland, on 13 June. Communities across County Durham have also been encouraged to host their own community exhibitions, capturing more stories, memories and reflections about life in a post-mining era.
GOING BACK BROCKENS: Monuments and Rhetoric After the Miners’ Strike is commissioned by No More Nowt, one of 38 Creative People and Places projects, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. The project is produced by Building Culture CIC – a County Durham based organisation that produces human-centred, meaningful work that is deeply rooted in place.
The exhibition opens at The Warehouse in Newgate Centre, Bishop Auckland, on Friday 13 June between 5pm-9pm. The exhibition will then be open from 12pm – 3pm every Thursday, Friday and Saturday until Saturday 5th July. Going Back Brockens will then be shown at the Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday 12 July and at Horden’s 125th anniversary celebrations on Friday 22 August. All three exhibitions are free to attend.
To find out more about Going Back Brockens, see here.
